All those variables are of intense interest to climatologists, but they don't want to converse with 'laymen' about them for several reasons.

Solar: We have sunspot records since 1749, and they indicate the sun got more active in the C20th. However, there is a strong move from NASA guys to reinterpret old geomagnetic data to say the Sun hasn't varied enough to be the cause of warming in the C20th. At the same time they have to invoke the sun to explain climate change before co2 took over so they are in a contradiction, and don't like to discuss it. The only solar measure they will use is TSI, which doesn't vary much (0.1% - enough to cause a 0.07C change in surface temp over the 11 year solar cycle, without considering amplification caused by changes in humidity, cloud cover etc). They won't consider the fact that various wavelengths within the TSI (total solar irradiance) vary a lot more, especially UV. UV variation has poorly known but large effects on ozone, plankton density and etc which have poorly understood but possibly large effects on the absorbance of energy into the ocean, cloud cover, and etc.

Clouds: The elephant in the room. Simple calcs show that a 1% variation in tropical cloud cover could reverse or double the warming trend. We can't measure cloud cover (and droplet size, density etc) accurately enough, so the models assume it remains constant. The empirical data (not without its problems) says cloud cover dropped in the tropics 1979-1998. Empirical study of the satellite data shows overall cloud feedback is negative. The modelers assume it is positive.

Sea surface temp: There's a pretty flat trend in the southern hemisphere. Co2 mixes fairly quickly from where it is emitted worldwide. How is it that global warming supposedly caused by co2 has warmed the northern hemisphere more than the south? The answer would seem to be that back radiation from greenhouse gases warm the land but not the ocean so much. Since the global ocean surface temp drives atmospheric temp, they don't really want to go there.

The fixation with global average surface air temperature masks the underlying important variables: Ocean heat content, which is only known with reasonable accuracy since 2004, and has been falling, according to people I trust who have managed to get the data.Outgoing longwave radiation: The error in measurement is three times the claimed co2 signal.

A mushroom of cooled plasma popped like a pimple and rained onto the surface of the sun yesterday—shooting perhaps the largest amount of solar material into space ever seen, scientists say.

...

"This totally caught us by surprise. There wasn't much going on with this spot, but as it came from behind the sun, all of the sudden there was a flare and huge ejection of particles," said astrophysicist Phillip Chamberlin of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), one of several spacecraft that recorded the event.

Mauna Loa is a volcano at 13680 ft. (4170 m) above sea level with historic temperature right above freezing in June. It wouldn't take much for a little snow.

Having just returned from the big island, I can assure you that it was hot at sea level when the sun was shining.

Similarly, in the American desert southwest, our mountains start at 7,000 ft transitioning from desert to forest and at some altitudes even alpine. Even just north of the border with Mexico, at altitude, we've been hit with snow last week of April from northern cold fronts in El Nino years. Let alone Colorado and the rest of the Rockies... Even interior Mexico has snow-capped mountains for decades.

When it comes to American consumption of fuel and production of waste products, don't overlook economics and personal finance. When gas is at $4 per gallon (USD), even car-crazed Los Angeles residents en masse start switching to public transportation (greater Los Angeles is building "Metro" e-train/subway tracks as fast as they can and even Dallas TX is expanding train-based public transport throughout the "Metroplex" - nice train cars). Love our automobiles but frankly most can do WITHOUT long commutes/errands and traffic jams; with increasing the "fast n'furious" racers, talking/texting on cell phones instead of driving, and the increasing amount of elderly driving 25mph in a 50mph fast lane - enough already. Detroit's new SUV line have some killer MPGs but think it'll take an affordable 80 MPG sports-sedan to reverse the trend towards more public transport.

George, going back to sea surface temperature, the ENSO index and solar cycles. I've made this graph showing the ENSO since 1950in relation to the solar cycles. What do you notice about when the red El Nino's occur in relation to solar cycles here?

Good work - nice chart. A pattern seems to appear. I'd like to see your forecast drawn into the graph extended out to 2020.

Recently I was browsing the solar cycle at http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/'solar maximum is now expected to occur in May, 2013'. Was wondering about how that related to the other climate change variables.

George, the ocean dynamics are really hard to predict, particularly when the sun goes into one of it's bicentennial wobbly phases when activity falls far below normal. In general, I think we'll be seeing weaker el nino's and stronger la nina's from now until after solar max around late 2013. Then a couple of stronger el nino's out to 2017, followed by a BIG la nina and an overall fall in global surface temperature just in time for me to collect from Dean. :-)

The general observation I hoped everyone might spot on the ENSO graph from 1950 is that of the 18 El Nino events shown on the graph, 17 of them *start* (i.e. SOI rises above zero) when solar activity has peaked and is falling. The Exception is the small event at 1957, though even that one occurs just following a rapid downspike in solar activity near the peak of the cycle. Most of the big ones seem to start just before or just on solar minimum. Maybe this way of looking at it will help:

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I have a hypothesis about why that is. I'd like to work out a way to test the idea with an experiment, and I think Roger Caffin could help me if he's willing.

When I noticed an interesting correlation between solar activity levels and humidity high in the atmosphere, it got me thinking about the many billions of tons of water there is in the atmosphere. Here's the correlation:

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Now, when solar activity is high, the atmosphere and ocean is directly warmed by the Sun more, and this causes more evaporation and an expanded atmosphere carrying more water vapour higher up. This will increase the gravitational potential of the atmosphere and therefore air pressure at sea level. When solar activity drops, the reverse happens, and I think this may be the cause of the sudden upwellings of energy from the ocean that characterise El Nino events. A bit like when you open a bottle of carbonated beverage and the drop in pressure causes the bubles of gas coming out of solution and rising. Indeed, the ENSO index is a measure of sea level pressure differences between Tahiti and Darwin, so there is already a known connection between SLP and ENSO. I want to see if overall pressure changes rather than differentials which also have an effect.

To test this, we could devise some apparatus whereby we have a container with water in, and an airspace above. A couple of digital turkey thermometers let in near the surface and base, and a schreader valve and tyre pump to change air pressure.

I know Roger has some nice equipment for measuring temperature over time and logging the data...

I'm sceptical of some of the past projected volcanic forcing of climate, for various reasons, but there's no doubt that this one could kick enopugh So2 into the stratosphere to cause some cooling effects on top of the ocean cooling we've already seen.